S. Awan is a failed journalist, a student of history, a lover of music, film, culture, and an enthusiast of the the controversial and the weird.
Also a musician, and part-time freelance, involuntary human being. Also occasionally lives on the moon. Also is a ghost. And a cigarette butt that hasn't been put out properly; so, you know, there's still, like, smoke coming out of it and stuff...

In June 2014, a group of armed militants and extremists made their dramatic journey across the Syrian border into Iraq, quickly capturing Mosul and Baiji and almost reaching the capital Baghdad.

The group possessed convoys of identical Toyota trucks and the kind of arsenal some countries in the region would be envious of. The media was flooded with footage of drive-by shootings, large-scale death marches, mass executions and mass graves. Any Iraqi soldier captured was executed.

That incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades into Iraq was part of a planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by various states.

The jihadists at some point appropriated entire truckloads of American humvees; they acquired helicopters, tanks, and artillery. They photographed and filmed themselves, openly broadcasting what they were doing all over social media. In spite of this, no attempt was made by the US or anyone else to stop them – not until after the group had already taken over entire cities or towns and begun its bloody crusade. (more…)

This is a follow-up, I guess, to the article I last published here on the Shamima Begum or ‘ISIS bride’ media storm: but asking some follow-up questions and raising some related issues.

In that other article, I asked about why the teenage girl’s situation was being so blown up in the media, while other individuals – including ISIS fighters – had been allowed to return to the UK without any media scrutiny.

I also questioned the role of British intelligence in the exodus of these various kids to Syria in the first place, the role of someone like Anjem Choudary in that same context, and whether Shamima Begum was simply being made a media scapegoat in order to deflect focus from the real ‘controversies’, conspiracies and questions. (more…)

It’s been difficult to ignore or avoid the massive coverage, controversy and debate surrounding the ‘ISIS bride’Shamima Begum that has dominated British news in the passed week or so.

The massively inflated ‘scandal’ has created differences in opinion over what should be done with her, whether her citizenship should be revoked, whether she should be allowed back into the UK, etc.

I personally have no interest in Shamima Begum: basically a dumb girl who drank the Islamic State Kool-Aid, went to start a new life in the Wild West, and now wants to come home because the ‘adventure’ has crumbled to dust.

However, the entire ‘controversy’ over what to do with British kids who went over to Syria or Iraq to live in (or fight for) the ‘caliphate’ seems to me to be a massive distraction strategy: it’s aim being to get everyone fired up over highly divisive idiots and their dumb decisions or their radicalisation… while completely failing to register the role of the government and the state in the entire misbegotten saga.

In effect, all of the focus and debate is over a nineteen year-old girl who made a shitty decision when she was 15: so that none of the focus or debate is on more important aspects of the equation that she became a tiny part of. (more…)

The big debate is over two brutal jihadists – Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh – and their extradition to the United States: or, at least, their being allowed to be taken from Syria to the United States.

The two of them were part of the high-profile “Beatles” cell of British ISIS fighters who participated in the brutal execution of high-profile foreign victims at the height of the ISIS psy-op and ‘caliphate’ – which, bear in mind, was created in Iraq and Syria as a result of US-led geo-political activity in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

To non-UK-based people reading this, the issue is that the UK – until this announcement – was understood to hold a firm moral position against the death penalty: and against cooperating in the extradition of anyone who is liable to be facing execution.

Shami Chakribati framed the Home Office’s decision in these terms, saying that Sajid Javed had ‘secretly and unilaterally abandoned Britain’s opposition to the death penalty‘ – a position that had previously negated the extradition of anyone expected to face execution in another country. (more…)

In a 2015 article concerning this deployment of troops in France, I wrote of the thousands of armed soldiers that were about to be deployed into the streets as ‘a move that bears a striking resemblance to the beginnings of Martial Law in Europe…’

I also said in the same post that London would probably follow.

I actually don’t want to bother talking about the Parsons Green incident itself – but to explore a broader question about the response to it; and about the idea of armed soldiers being out in public to protect us from terror threats.

We can mostly skip the usual repetoire concerning the ‘terror incident or false flag?’ question (analysing footage, lack of CCTV, speculation on ‘crisis actors’, etc) and leave that to others.

A crude explosive device was apparently to blame for the tube incident in Parsons Green (though, from photos, it appears not to have damaged the bucket or container it was in), with around two dozen or so people reportedly injured and needing hospitalisation.

Quite possibly this IED was placed by a terrorist, ISIS sympathiser or lone wolf. And possibly it wasn’t. (more…)

Just an add-on here to some of what I was talking about yesterday.

The more I look at the entire paradigm, the stranger it gets and the more I wonder if we’re trapped in a kind of weird reality TV show.

I use the term ‘reality TV show’ not just because the US President is a former reality TV star; but because the term ‘reality TV’ doesn’t, strictly speaking, denote a ‘fake’ reality, but a kind of staged production that nevertheless purports to be showing us a true reality (even though, in many cases, a reality TV show isn’t showing us a true reality at all).

In the previous article, I was talking about how some of the alt-right opinion-makers and figureheads are probably psy-op merchants, helping to advance a divide-and-conquer agenda by brainwashing gulible people. (more…)

Widely published ‘reports’ in the last week or so claimed that the so-called ‘Islamic State’ group’s elusive ‘caliph’, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been killed in a Russian airstrike in Raqqa.

In fact, the reports are now that this story was false – which makes me wonder why it was doing the rounds at all. Baghdadi has in fact been declared ‘killed’ a number of times in the last couple of years. I’ve never believed those claims – because I’ve never been properly convinced that ‘Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’ exists at all.

In covering this subject of Baghdadi here, I’m going to revisit some of what I’ve written here before – specifically regarding the Baghdadi mystery, but also the older Bin Laden myth (as I believe the two are related), and the whole business of this ‘caliphate’ that the ‘ISIS/Daesh’ group has been trying to carve out in the Middle East. (more…)

I was asked by Dr Leon Tressell to re-post this very lengthy article he recently published at SouthFront. In it, he provides a very thorough analysis of the situation now in Syria; and of the actions and motivations of the various players and power-blocs involved in the conflict and how the situation in Syria is likely to play out.

‘Do any these power blocs, that have carved out spheres of influence in northern Syria, offer a solution to the Syrian people’s desperate desire for peace and the reconstruction of their country?’ he asks.

Below is the full article, reproduced here with his permission, including the original images and maps. (more…)

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